A Tempest

Gosh, I haven't written in well over a week but I have pretty much the best excuse in the world and her name is Tempest.

SURPRISE!

The next several posts will be dedicated to a retrospective look at the very unexpected birth of our daughter.  She's finally here!  I didn't even get to write my letter to her entitled "On the Eve of Your Birth" it happened so quickly.  Now she's snuggled in her daddy's arms in the nursery we worked so hard to make ready for her homecoming and not a day too soon. 

Tempest Felicity Caldwell Austell was born one week ago today at 9:27 PM on Tuesday, September 16.  She weighed 7 lbs, 3 oz ad was 20.5 inches long at birth.  For a 36-weeker, or "later preterm" baby she is practically perfect in every way, despite a mild case of jaundice which we're working at expunging from her system the old-fashioned way: got milk?

She arrived 3 weeks early due to a rather dramatic confluence of sudden medical factors -- would we have it any other way? -- so to say we never saw this coming is putting it mildly.  Neither of us ever thought in our wildest planning that our 5th trip to L&D would result in an actual baby.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Tess, as we've taken to calling her, deserves the chronicle of her birth I had planned to write so indulge me a bit.  Let's journey back two weeks and engage in a little story time.  I left you on the eve of our final MFM ultrasound, waiting for the final prognosis of placenta previa and an actual c-section date.